Occasionally, a client will raise some concerns about information security with regards to its Marketo implementation and its integration with Salesforce. Here are some pointers to helpful resources that can help alleviate InfoSec anxiety.

Information Security concerns are always valid, end of argument. If you're a business, and you run part or all of it online, infosec should be on your mind. When it comes to marketing automation, concerns may be raised due to the fact that such systems require integration to the CRM in order to run smoothly and to result in the desirable improvement in marketing-sales business processes.

So should you, the B2B marketer or Marketo implementer, run into such concerns, we've collected a few helpful resources and pointers:

Marketo TrustThis web page provides detailed information on Marketo's "multi-layered approach to protect and monitor all your information." It should be your first stop whenever infosec issues are raised by your organization.

Marketo -Salesforce sync overview and detailsIt's crucial for your IT and InfoSec experts to understand how the Marketo-Salesforce integration works, so they can make informed decisions. Most important is knowing which objects are 'touched' by the Marketo sync user in Salesforce and what are the permissions that govern it:

Marketo is implemented within well over 3,000 organizations worldwide, many of them are public, global companies with extensive information security protocols and governance measures. Letting your internal, concerned stakeholders know about the identity of some of them could go a long ways towards making them appreciate its security measures.

Here are some public, global companies that work with Marketo and/or Salesforce: CA Technologies, GE, Panasonic, Citrix, Canon, Hyundai, Amdocs, and many more.

It's worth knowing that over 90% of Marketo customers are also Salesforce customers. The rest have other CRMs like Dynamics or SAP or no CRM at all. Crucially, wherever there is CRM, Marketo is (almost) ALWAYS integrated to it.

Marketo has been communicating this architectural change to its customers worldwide since August of 2016, yet only lately it has become clearer that the change will affect more than a few fields. Specifically this is true for Marketo customers whose Salesforce CRM edition is the Professional edition.

Tip: if you're unsure which edition your Salesforce org is running on, log in to your account there and simply hover the cursor on the browser tab where Salesforce loaded. The tab tooltip will show you the edition.

If you're not a Salesforce Pro user, you can stop reading here; the change won't affect you beyond the 16 fields that you were asked by Marketo to recreate in Salesforce (see here
, Marketo login required).

It's hard to overstate the degree to which Marketo's Email Editor 2.0 has improved on the previous generation. In fact, it has become, in one fell swoop, the most powerful email editor in the marketing automation space - and we know quite a few of them very well.

One of its most striking features is the use of variables to expose many aspects of email design and functionality to the editor's user interface, enabling users to quickly and easily manipulate their email's elements, without resorting to source code edits or fighting the whims of the rich text editor.

To fully benefit from this feature, though, it's important to understand the two types of variables available to you: global and local. Mastering them and configuring your templates accordingly can greatly improve your (or your users') email editing experience in Marketo.

One of the key functions of any marketing operations role, or system, is to ensure the proper handling of new leads. Depending on your business process implementation, this may involve any combination of the following sub-procedures: